8 LENIN AVENUE

Salcuta Filan, a young Roma woman from Romania, and her two children have been living in France since 2002. When they first arrived, they lived in a caravan in a shantytown in the Paris suburbs. Today, they consider themselves French citizens. A filmed chronicle of 15 years of positive struggles to make a home for themselves in a country where a considerable majority still believes that they are unable to integrate.
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Storyline:
Just as every morning, Salcuta listens to the radio before going to work. "Roma don’t try to integrate in France! They have to go home! ..." she hears a politician say. He goes on, sounding ferocious and harsh. Salcuta has often heard such remarks ever since she came to France in 2002 with her two young children.
His words speak of exclusion, revealing a rising wave of prejudice towards the Roma community. So…are they destined to remain third-class Europeans? From the eviction from the shantytown and the destruction of her caravan by police forces until the time she moves into the apartment at nr. 8 Avenue Lenin in the town of Achères, fifteen years pass by. Over this long period, a close relationship has developed between the filmmakers, Anna Pitoun and Valérie Mitteaux, and this courageous Roma woman and her family.
Today, Salcuta has a job, an apartment and she is paying taxes. But integration is not just an administrative matter and, with the economic crisis, other problems arise. But Salcuta meets problems head on, because as a European she has made her choice: home is right here.